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Zwani
Zwani '''is a language spoken in the Zwan Kingdom, an island nation in the Mediterranean, where it is the sole official language of it's entire population of 32 million people. ' General information Zwani is a synthetic nominative-accusative head-initial language. It is an Imanith language with large influences from Turkish and Spanish, and with smaller, but noticeable, influences from Armenian, Polish, and, more recently, English. Word order is generally SVO, but the subject pronoun can be dropped given that it is personal, not polypersonal, and in the nominative case. Verbs conjugate for person, number, tense, aspect, and mood. Nouns decline for case and number. Pronouns decline for gender, number, case, and person. History Modern Zwani has been standardized since the Zwan Kingdom became a constitutional monarchy in 1914. Before this, multiple dialects of Zwani and multiple other Imanith languages were spoken throughout the Kingdom. It was written in the constitution that any official language needed to be standardized by the government, and the first comprehensive grammar of Zwani was commisioned. Many other Imanith languages are still spoken regionally, but few, if any, have more than a million speakers. The notable influence of so many languages on Zwani is due to the many odd alliances, mostly with far-away nations, the Zwan people had throughout their history, many of which still stand to this day. The language is different from Middle Zwani, which fell out of usage sometime in the mid-1700s, due to the large number of Turkish and Spanish loans, the distinction of the post-alveolar and retroflex fricatives, the loss of ejective stops and affricates, the higher rate of suffixing, the loss of grammatical gender, the complete loss of the Vocative case, the merging of the partitive and genetive cases, and the merging of the dative and the benefactive cases among other small differences. Phonology 'Consonants' *The nasal consonant can assimilate to a labiodental, dental, or retroflex nasal before labiodental, dental, or retroflex consonant, but these nasals are not seperate phonemes. 'Vowels' 'Alphabet' If two vowels are written in a row, they are always pronounced as two vowels seperated by a glottal stop. Because of this, the glottal stop ('), despite being an official letter of the script, is usually omitted in writing because it only appears between two vowels in a row. All official documents are written with the glottal stop. The letter ''Ńń represent both /ɲ/ and /ŋ/. Word finally, it will be /ŋ/ and everywhere else, it is /ɲ/. 'Phonotactics' ©©V©© Grammar 'Pronouns' Pronouns are irregular and do not follow normal declension patterns as other nouns do. Zwani is a pro-drop language so nominative pronouns are usually omitted. However, 3rd person pronouns are usually not omitted if the gender distinction is necessary. Polypersonal pronouns Polypersonal pronouns express the subject and object as a one-word pronoun in Zwani. They agree with the subject and object and can only be used when the subject (nominative) and the object (accusative) are both pronouns. Verbs used alongside a polypersonal pronoun conjugate for the nominative person and not the accusative. 'Nouns' Declension There are three types of nouns in Zwani and each noun type has a different declension pattern. Type one nouns end in a front vowel, type two nouns in a central or back vowel, and type three nouns end in a consonant. Nouns decline for seven cases: nominative, accusative, dative, genetive, insturmental, locative, and ablative. *The nominative 'case marks the subject. *The '''accusative '''case marks the direct object of a clause, but also that of a preposition. *The '''dative '''case marks the indirect object, but also functions as a benefactive case. *The '''genetive '''case shows possession, but also functions as a partitive case. *The '''insturmental '''case marks an object being used for something. This can be using an object to do something (ex: i write ''with the pencil) or using a place for a gathering (ex: we had a party at my house). *The 'locative '''case marks the object of a locative or a motion preposition, or when used without a preposition, shows location in at or on something. There is no distinction between the three other than context. *The '''ablative '''case is a rare exception to the locative case. It shows movement away from something or acquisition from something. Type one declension Type two declension Type three declension Type three declensions are pretty straight-forward and do not require any truncating whatsoever. Nouns instead, essentially, suffix case endings. Determiners Determiners are suffixed onto the noun after declension. All suffixes have two forms and the one that gets used depends on whether the declined noun ends in a consonant or a vowel. There is no indefinite article. The noun is assumed indefinite if there isn't a determiner suffixed onto it. 'Verbs Zwani verbs are very complex. There are two types of verbs: verbs with the infinitive ending in ''-k'' and verbs with the infinitive ending in ''-r'' or ''-l''. Each type has a different conjugation. Verbs actually conjugate only for person, number, and tense but a synthetic "verb" conveys aspect, mood, evidentiality, and negativity. However, evidentiality is only conveyed in the past tense of a verb. There are no irregular verbs in Zwani. ''-k'' infinitive verbs Verbs with the infinitive ending in ''-k'' are native verbs, but this also encompasses loans from Turkish or Georgian, but sometimes English. ''-r/l'' infinitive verbs Verbs with the infinitive ending in ''-r or -l'' are usually loans from Spanish, but also loans from Polish, Russian, Armenian, and rarely English. The synthetic verb The synthetic verb conveys information that the simple conjugated verb cannot. It goes directly after the verb in a sentence. There are three main parts: the aspect marker, the mood marker, and the evidentiality marker. The evidentiality marker is only used, however, in the past tense of the verb. It can take on a negative suffix (ńe-) to negate the verb before it. *the vowel in parentheses is only written and pronounced in the absence of an evidentiality marker Vocabulary Zwani Dictionary at ConWorkShop (updated frequently) Greetings Example Text Category:Languages